Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

I understand where you're coming from. I'm increasingly the least-tech focused of my family/social circle, despite being the most heavily involved in the tech industry. In fact, I think my lack of bullishness in tech is due to the fact that I've been in the tech industry for 40 years. I know where the downsides lie.

However, don't let the current reality get you down. One thing that being in this industry has taught me is that nothing is completely fixed and permanent. To wit, the global monopolist who benefited the most from the network-effect lock-in used to be IBM. Then it was Microsoft. Now it's Facebook. In time, this too will change.

What wont change is the need for level-headed 'grey-beards' and those others who have lived sufficiently long in the tech space to have accumulated some level of wisdom, which they can then share with those that follow.

I was surrounded with shady people, learned the darkest of the dark of humanity very young and never had any utopia: people are monsters, women are always men, help is never truly free etc. Im not sure how it was before the internet, but clearly I never had a view of it as an utopia: it s a jungle.

Facebook and opinion sharing network in general are not very important: if people could be Nazi in 1940, Im not sure why you think it's different or even facebooks fault: they simply reflect what we are.

And nobody want decentralization of power really. People want power centralized closer to them.

For one, I think the internet became better and cleaner with time. Or it s me who get trapped a lot less.

If it makes you feel any better, it's not exactly just about the internet or what we modern folk consider contemporary technology. The question of societal transformation to a place where technical knowledge (in a broad sense) has become a requirement for basic living and the side effects or unintended consequences that it entails have been on the minds of philosophers since the industrial revolution. People have notice that the reliance on "machine" is going to change their world similarly to how the internet changed our 80s and 90s world.

Two very interesting things I'd recommend reading for a different way of framing this issue (but from the same perspective) that's been helpful for me. Both by Jacques Ellul. First is "Technological Society" 1954, and second is "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" 1962. The second one might not seem related, but it is.

2. Facebook purchased WhatsApp to remove competition and options from its users.

And more https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/04/facebook-...